Jhund- A Brilliant Play

 A Hindi play I saw at Rangashankara. I am glad I did! It was absolutely brilliant. 


The writing and direction is great. The story, in a nutshell. Two strangers running away from a crowd (Bheed) meet in a strange place, that remains undefined. It has two lockable doors though. Then, strangely, their cell phones stop working, except for incoming messages from an unknown entity. Having no choice, they follow the directions as received, parting with their belongings for unseen powers to take them away. They wait, totally controlled by this entity, who makes them a member of another online group called Jhund. 

They also get new names/identities, and there are online views to be expressed. For each 'like' in support of their views, they get points. Online wars are fought between trolls of two major thought leaders. 

Ends in an interesting manner! Every line of dialogue is either meaningful, or humourous or both. Only two actors carry the whole show for an hour. 

Hats off to creativity that is contemporary, and has a message, though not overtly conveyed. Understated, but a satire brilliantly done!

Fears

 Let's discuss fears. We all have some. I remember an old film starring Jean Paul Belmondo, called 'Fear Over the City." But these are fears of people, individual or collective.

Chief Vitalstatistix- that the sky will fall over his head.

Joe Biden-that there will be a third world war.

Putin- that he will be put out.

Ekta Kapoor- that she will run out of plots.

The daily wage earner- that there might be another lockdown.

Singapore- that the island might sink.

Maldives- that honeymooners might take over the island country.

Facebookers- that they might not get any more compliments for their posts

Twitter Users- that Trump might tweet again.

The Director of KGF Chapter 2 is fearless, because numbers being infinite, he can have any number of sequels..

My Cabinet

 I once had a client named Armaity Cabinetmaker, in Trikaaya ad agency, when I was in a Market research firm. But this is not about her. If I ever became head on a nation (don't laugh!), these people would make it to my cabinet. Of course, I would reshuffle the cabinet next time I got elected. 

Tathagata Ghosh, and Siddhartha, the enlightened souls- Margdarshak Mandal

Arun Vasudevan, the prompt guy who is well-informed - Information and Broadcasting

Mr. B.B. Dash, head of my security/defence

Abha Kulkarni, H.R. minister

Savitha, the head of External Affairs/Diplomacy

Sunil Kataria, the Finmin.

Sheetal Garg, Arts and Culture

Anam Nuhi, Petrochemicals

Prachi Jain, Education

Anshita Abhishek Chetty- Party(ing) Head

Ishita Modi+Kedar Muley - Ministry of Planning

Shatakshi Tripathi- Digital Marketing Head

Ministry of Kaur Competence and Skill building- Harnam Kaur+Ruminder Kaur

Dramatics- Sanjana Rao Yarram

Branding Head- Kanika Mhendiratta

Literary Activities- Nishka Rathi

Shafique Gajdhar- Analytics

Tourism Minister- Ankita Joshi

Aditi Atre- Entrepreneurship

Research-Anusha Soni

Court Jester- open to selection through a competition,





Headlines and News

 There is a constant hunger among media, particularly TV news channels, for the criminal, the negative or the bizarre. An adage goes, "It's not news if a dog bites a man. It's news if a man bites a dog." I also think many media don't spend enough money on their sources or their journalists to send them to cover anything new or different. 

The upshot is that most news is negative, made worse by ill-conceived "debates" on many channels. They are mostly shouting matches with pre-conceived views on all sides, including the anchor's. The viewer (if any) stands to gain little for his time.

Not surprisingly, many people have just given up, and only watch content from OTT channels. But they probably lose out on what awareness could have been built. Newspapers still do a halfway decent job of presenting some news and views. But they have lost readership among younger people.

Not sure how the fourth pillar of a democracy is going to lead us in the future. Hoping it does its job, unless bought out by some political party or the other.

NMIMS Bengaluru Convocation April 2022

 A physical convocation, at last. After 2019, a gap of three years. Last two were held online, and though well-attended, the excitement this time was palpable. The Chief Guest was from IBM Consulting, and heads DevOps and AI OPs practice. The emcees were Rakshita and Nikhiel from MBA batch 12. Exec PGDM students of Batch 25 also graduated along with MBA 11. 









NMIMS Bangalore Upcoming Convocation

 Had an informal meeting with the Convocation Chief Guest for the upcoming convocation at NMIMS Bangalore-Ms. Meenakshi Sreenivasan. She's an accomplished global head of one of IBM Consulting's important Practices. It was fascinating to learn about upcoming areas in which the company has a leading-edge practice for global clients. Also learnt about DevOps and AIOps, the new buzzwords in the I.T. Consulting domain. A lot of multinationals use India as their base now for many cutting edge products/services/businesses. IBM is also one of these.

Our 11th batch of MBA, and 25th batch of Executive MBA program are convocating tomorrow (April 21, 2022), physically after a long break in physical events, due to COVID. 

A pic with her and the MBA Chairperson from our informal meeting.


Another pic with our Placement Chief Ekalavya.



Golf Outing at Bangalore

The last time I played on a Golf course was around October last year, at Hyderabad Golf Club. Since then, though I have played a few shots while training people at NMIMS Bangalore, I had not played at a Golf course. So it was great to catch up with an alumnus of IMTG, Vikram Venkateswaran, and meet a new friend Sohail, with whom I did play at the ASC. Some pics-












 

Writer Basti

 That's the name of a colony (basti is a colony) we lived in in the small coal-mining town, ages ago. In general, life in the towns was slow, devoid of any major city-style entertainment. But I was fixated on the radio, and later, the gramophone records. The Club where we socialised and played Badminton or went swimming took care of the rest. The radio had cricket commentary and news too, so it was the Google of yesteryear for us. Plus Youtube, minus the videos.

We were there mostly in the summer holidays, and we played a lot of Bridge with friends and parents too. So we were happy and carefree, though the heat reached the high forties Celsius quite often. Sometimes, movies were an outing, and at others, a trip to the river. The Godavari was not too far from one of our homes.

Recently, we caught up with some old friends from that era, so this is nostalgia born out of that meeting.

Visitors from Albany, New York

 We had the Dean of the Business School and two professors from State Univ. of New York at Albany visit us. We have been partners at the University level, for a few years, and have a 2yrs. + 2 yrs. Bachelor's program with a dual degree arrangement with them. It was a pleasure catching up in person and discussing collaboration opportunities of different kinds, including research, conferences..





Weekend Pinks

 Whatever is the opposite of Blues, I mean. Pinks, Greens, or Reds. Had a nice weekend punctuated by a play at Rangashankara, food, random coffee, a new Biryani from Dindigul, and some home-made Keema biryani. Also friends, and book shopping. And karaoke sessions. Aadmi ko aur kya chahiye? (What more can one ask for?). Evidence of some of these-








Gundappa Vishwanath's Autobiography

 There were many gentlemen cricketers in that era, which I had the good fortune to grow up watching. Vishy was one of them. Though he was not as big a star as perhaps Gavaskar or Tendulkar (later), he had a personality which stood out. Also known as the man of Cuts and Square-cuts, his autobiography is full of humility for all the well-known personalities of his era. 

This includes anecdotes about Jaisimha, Pataudi, Man Singh (administrator), Polly Umrigar, Vijay Manjrekar, and of course, Prasanna, Chandrasekhar, and Wadekar. Pataudi held a special place in his heart, as he was "spotted" by the former captain when he made a double hundred in a Ranji Trophy match, and nurtured into the Indian team. Full of unknown tidbits about the 1971 twin tours of West Indies and England which turned the course of India's cricketing fortunes, and much more. Well-narrated, and a must read for anyone who loves cricket and wants to know about the pre-Rahul Dravid gentle cricketer from Bangalore.



The Smart Ones

 Not really a full list, because there are probably hundreds more. But a listing of some smart people from among my acquaintances- in my humble view.

Lingaraju, Rajan of India, Dash, Harish Chau, Shubha, Anuradha Herlekar/Nadkarni, Prabhakar, ...from IIMB MBA class.

Meenu Mynam, Abhinav Kamal, Nikita Kumar, Shafique Gajdhar, Pallavi Sharma, Ishan Joshi, Ishita Modi, Anshita Chetty, Sheetal Garg, Siri Adi, Abha Kulkarni, Divya Singh, Gowri, Anchal Sharma,  .. from IMT Nagpur 

IIM Indore- Kalaivani, Madhan, Anusha Soni, Shatakshi Tripathi, Prachi Jain, Shailaja Gupta Kapoor, Trinoyoni, Zenitha, Writabrita,

KIAMS- Sunil Kataria, Jogeswari aka Jogi, Padmapriya, Smita, Jimmy, Nikhil Damle, Priyadarshi, Dheeraj Mohan,.

Jaya Jha, from IIM Lucknow 

Gaurav Gollierkeri, from IIM K

Sowmyashree Gonibeedu, Shreya Sengupta, Arvind Joshi- PESIT

Aashneet Gautam, Nagendra Shenoy, Bharath Shenoy from IFIM B school


2024 - A Recap

 Starting with December 2023, on 30th I attended a wedding - and met Natasha Kothari, who runs Studio Ungap. Dhruv, her fiance, was the groo...

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